How to build a powerful and profitable mailing list

If you have studied small business marketing, you may have heard the frequent cheer “The money is in The List!”

And indeed, creating a strong email marketing list is a powerful foundation for any business, online or offline.

In this video, I give you a few things to think about as you are establishing your mailing list, as well as a cardinal sin to avoid. To view this directly on YouTube, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xEkc0qEbg

More marketing tips coming!

At the end of this month, I am going to be opening a new section of Power Boost Marketing for enrollment. Power Boost Marketing is a year-long program which teaches practical, actionable ways to grow your business while strengthening your business foundation and amping up your personal brand. I kicked it off last October with a fantastic group of entrepreneurs, and they are already getting great results.

As part of the education about the program, I will be filming some special in-depth video segments for people who are particularly interested in marketing tips. In order not to inundate my regular mailing list or blog readers with this information, I created a special Power Boost list so you are notified about the content as soon as it is live. To join this list (which of course you can unsubscribe from anytime, just like my regular mailing list), put your information in here:

[…] people totally unrelated to your venture capital process. One of the things that Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation mentions is the need to tailor the marketing copy that goes along with your mailing list to the […]

I now have started to look at unsubscribes as a great thing. These are people who don’t want to hear from me anyway, so it’s best they’re off the list. There is a core mailing list for me (10%) that engage with me and I just want to focus on growing that 10%. They are the ones who provide me with profits and the ones who share my stuff with everyone else.

Thanks for the video!

Oh… If you could do a shorter one next time that would be nice too (I know it’s tough with a lot of information though).

Unsubscribes can feel like rejection. When I first started my newsletter my mind would interpret an unsubscribe as someone saying ‘I hate you and your content’. Then I would gasp with horror. But now I realize that they probably just get too many emails or they aren’t in my target demographic. When I unsubscribe from other people’s lists it’s because of these reasons, and it’s from a neutral or kind place, not because I have anything against the person. I try to remember that this is probably how most other people feel when they unsubscribe from my stuff too.

Sometimes I unsubscribe from a mailing list because I am already linked to the person/company through social media, or even another mailing list. So it’s not always a rejection if someone unsubscribes, it might mean you are communicating well elsewhere.